Castles & Crusades at StruebCon V

I ran Ruins of Ramat for a group of five players at StruebCon V (thanks again to Polymythic Steve for hosting this kick-ass event).  I had some nice goodies from the Troll Lords to hand out, including rule packets and a free Players Handbook for one lucky player. It was a blast and I highly recommend Ruins of Ramat to anyone looking for a short old school adventure.  It's available for both C&C, Original Edition (aka Swords & Wizardry compatible), and Labyrinth Lord.

Hans snapped some photos as we played and here they are:

A nice shot of the Castle Keeper Screen. The players seemed to be a fan of the archer for some reason....

Yours truly preaching the good word.

I love this shot.  This sums up what great gaming is all about for me.

Behind the screen.

Hans's poo-flinging druid.

Late Night Castles & Crusades at StruebCon IV

My C&C session at StruebCon IV started around 1:00 AM. I was very pleased that nearly all StruebSquad members participated, despite the late hour. I think only two attendees (myself included) actively play RPGs (although I think a couple guys played their share of D&D back in the day).

It was Saturday night (err.. Sunday morning) and the last night for gaming. DohJoe was wired from winning the game of Battlestar Galactica in Machiavellian fashion, but the rest of the group was hurtin’. True gamers, they bellied up to the game table anyhow.

Genius that I am, I decided to grab their attention with a PowerPoint presentation. I had good intentions. When I ran C&C at StruebSquad III, I was geeked out and more or less just threw the players into the game without really explaining the rules. It went okay, but I wasn’t pleased with my performance. This time I had vowed to myself that the players would get the rules and actually know what the hell they were doing. I had envisioned some big screen to present this on (I’m not sure where I got that idea), but ended up showing it on a laptop which I hassled out of Polymythic Steve. I’m sure at the time he was thinking, “Dude, seriously?” (understandably so), but I was determined. I got about half-way through and realized “Uhm, yeah, this is freaking boring” and just grabbed a character sheet and walked them through the essentials.

Anyhow, you can find the PowerPoint (and the half-ass jokes within) at Google Docs: link. You can preview it at Google Docs, but to get the full effect (i.e., transitions and graphics), you’ll need to download it. I should note that the “subtraction” method I used for SIEGE checks is an alternative to the traditional way of handling them. I haven’t gotten enough C&C games under my belt to determine if its the easiest way to go.

I ran Dwarven Glory III: The Winding Stair, which is a nice short module. I provided miniatures (mostly pre-painted DDM ones from Wizards of the Coast) and I had pre-drawn the dungeon on large, drafting graph paper (with 1 inch squares). That saved me from having to halt the game to draw rooms when combat kicked in.

In hindsight, I should have done without the miniatures. While they do help with visualization, I think the minis kept the players in “board game” mode. One of the perks of C&C is that, due to lack of Attacks of Opportunities and such, there really is no need for miniatures and a battle grid. The game likely would have gone faster and I think it would have really driven home how an RPG is different from your standard game.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun and I think the guys did too. At the end, I had them all vote for the player they thought played the best. DohJoe won the vote, given the zest with which he took to his rogue character, and was awarded a set of “official” D&D dice.

Time to start planning for next year… this time without a PowerPoint presentation.

StruebCon IV

In mid-May, I attended StruebCon IV, a gaming convention hosted by Polymythic Steve. By "gaming convention," I mean a bunch of dudes taking over his house, playing games non-stop, and drinking his beer (also non-stop). The attendees are members of the StruebSquad, most of which are DC area gamers that Steve has assembled over the years. Others, such as myself, are from PA.

So what is with the “Strueb” stuff? It’s derived from Steve’s name. I should point out that Steve himself named neither the event nor the squad, but rather the group named both after him because he brought both the ‘con and the group together.

The guys do a great job with this. Hans worked up convention badges and DohJoe (of LaserPup fame) had commemorative dice made.

It was a lot of fun, although Chaos learned to ride her bike without training wheels while I was gone. It's not easy knowing I missed that. It wasn't intentional (Mrs. Frost didn't make the attempt without me), but was simply a matter of Chaos trying out a neighbor kid's old, smaller bike and taking off on it.

Anyhow, StruebCon is mainly a board game event, with a smattering of miniature gaming and one RPG event (mine). The board game library amassed by the Squad is damn impressive, so it's a nice chance for a RPG guy like myself to play games I've never heard of before.

The big hits of the convention were:

• Dominion – This is non-collectable card game that is a deck-building game. You have to balance amassing action cards with point cards in order to win in the end. I get the sense it’s the Settlers of Catan of the moment (i.e., it’s the hot game going around).
• Ricochet Robots – A real brain tester of a game. You can play with as many people as you want, as long as they can see the board. Players must mentally find the shortest way to move a pawn to a randomized board location. The concept is amazingly simple. Finding the short path (or any path at all) is amazingly tough.
  
  
• Werewolf – This is a blast of a party game. Players sit around accusing one another of who are the werewolves while the wolves silently execute the others. It’s funny, I completely forgot I had played this before as Mafia until Hans mentioned this alternate name on the way home.
• Battlestar Galactica - I didn’t play this myself (I opted for a game of Puerto Rico and Ambush Alley instead). I don’t know much about other than it’s a cooperative game based on the popular TV show remake and involves one or two Cylon (i.e., traitor) players. From the shouts and rants I heard, it looked like a great game. DohJoe played a Cylon and from all reports played it like a damn master. He used the fact that it was everyone’s first time playing (himself included) to his advantage, using his seeming naivety to throw off suspicion.
• Ambush Alley – I’d been looking forward to playing this game and was happy to finally
  
  
  get a chance to do so. As advertised, it was a down-and-dirty miniatures, modern warfare skirmish with a high body count. I played once as the insurgents and once as the US forces. I lost both times, but enjoyed the hell out it. The rules are a bit sketchy at times, but I’ve grown to see that as a plus. We just settled ambiguity with a die roll and move on (e.g., “I’m not sure that is enough cover or not. Hell, evens it is, odds it is not.”)

I myself ran a Castles & Crusades event and I officially became a C & C Ambassador for the event (well, for this and for GASPCon coming up in the fall). I’ll write more about that particular event in a separate post, but in short, it was some good late night fun and God bless the guys for staying up to play.

StruebCon IV was another rousing success. Many thanks to the Polymythic Steve and Mrs. Polymythic Steve for the beer, the brats, the omelets, and the kick-arse gaming.